Exhibition Gallery

Fragmentation is one of the phenomena characteristic of postmodern culture, as Baudrillard or Jameson noted. The vision of a fragmented world arises from the outbreak of the utopias of the 20th century, but is also associated with the logic of globalized capitalism, which affects the forms of representation and habitat as well as the forms of economic output and meaning. The urban experience is linked to the model of homogeneous recurrence –identical housing models and chain stores- that produces a rare disorientation, a strange fading away of the small differences that redefine everyday life.
At the same time, affected by the scattered universes of information – the vertigo-producing immersions into screens that take us from one scene to another in a matter of seconds –, we live in a world that is narrated to us, and then narrated by us, in a fragmented way. The immediacy, the discontinuity, and the bombardment of images generate a dizzying montage of fragments, a sort of broken syntax of the images that appear disconnected from context and history.

Fragmentation inserts itself even in the way we relate the deepest experiences—think, Barthes’ Fragmentos de un discurso amoroso. This aesthetic is also omnipresent in the visions that art reflects and provokes. Therefore, it is necessary to ask ourselves about its nature. Is there any continuity, a thread that will lead us to a reinvention of the senses in the modes of fragmented speech when it emanates from art?Fragmentation and other parables, curated by Aluna Curatorial Collective (Adriana Herrera and Willy Castellanos) at Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is an approximation to the recurrence, meaning, and the logic of fragmentation in contemporary artistic practices: Is it true that it disrupts the threads of connection with history or could it suggest other types of relations to the past and the present? What are the contemporary parables that suggest fragmentation in art?
In the processes of repetition and fragmentation, which can be observed in the series of paintings by Alfredo Alvarez Plágaro that are reflections of themselves, “identical” and multiplied to infinity; as well as in the abstract pieces that Martín Pelenur playfully manufactures with adhesive tape, the sense of creative play opens fissures in the landscape of contemporary uniformity. Plágaro mocks the unique character bestowed upon painting with his series of repetitive paintings, and converts painting into a mirror of homogenization and a liberating smile. Pelenur, sustained by what he mockingly called a “self-scholarship” (or the decision of paying himself for time invested in art), and the exercise of a stream of consciousness, tries the limits of constructive art. Sonia Falcone uses the photographic record of a natural landscape (similar to the one that marked her childhood) as a basis for the repetitive patterns of stained glass with which she builds windows, safe havens for contemplation as an experience and memory of that which unites us. Florencio Gelabert constantly expands the field of sculpture with formal explorations and conceptual plays on the parable of the time in which we live, creating an aesthetic that ultimately functions as an emotional metaphor. The pieces of segmented logs, burned and repeated, are a metaphor for the real measure of his own body, and for all the things that time and/or history throw into the fire.
Both in the vertiginous strokes with which Miguel Acosta returns to visited cities, and in the virtuous paintings of abandoned industrial architecture in which Viviana Zargón fuses photo archives and games of fiction, there are affective indissoluble threads, other ways of entering into the story and sneaking into the interstices that we see formally as blank spaces or as silent metal pictures. The subtexts of history that multiply in fragments of seductive formal beauty in the works of Mabel Poblet suggest aesthetic ways to assimilate sharp memories as a way of continuity in aesthetic production. Rummaging in the intermediate layers of her work, she continues an exercise of re-coding that weaves together the pieces of the puzzle of the history of her country (Cuba) with visual fragments from her diary of continuous trips to and from the island. In the video and sculpture of Ana Isabel Diez strokes of fabric that are fragmented before our eyes and ears provoke (in two parallel mediums) the uncomfortable memory of what was destroyed and the possibility of subsequent forms of re-composition. In the case of Sam Winston, his practice is “concerned with language both as a carrier of messages but also as a form in and of itself.” He creates another type of deconstruction and re-construction: by fragmenting the elements that usually compose the presentation of a painting, he creates a tridimensional “painting,” a poetic composition with scattered glasses and a broken white frame. In doing so he blurs the frontiers between form and content.
The paradox is that facing both the experience of discontinuity and fragmentation, and also the homogenization of urban models wrapped in clouds of information, there arise other orders in art, languages of the back and forth from the abstract to the referential, holding the tip of Ariadne’s thread: In the labyrinth of time and the knowledge of the contemporary world, where the parables of dispersion multiply, the fragments of artistic discourse may offer another type of cohesion; the thread of the continuity of memory and the affective and playful imagination that has the potential to enter and leave the past and present, attaching us to history in a creative way.

Alfredo Alvarez Plágaro (Vitoria, Spain, 1960). Since the 80’s his Cuadros Iguales (Identical Paintings) are, paradoxically, a unique series of repeated paintings that he installs at uniform distances so that they form a single work, open to variation. As Esther Ruelfs states “as a matter of fact, his work consummates a double repetition: on the one hand, the artist follows the concept of repetition by executing what are actually disparate works series but calling them all Identical Paintings (…); on the other, every painting in all the series repeats the composition of every other painting in that series. All parts within a single series are rendered likewise ‘Identical Paintings.’” He has recently exhibited solo at the Bochum Gallery, Bochum, Germany, 2014; the Mazana Space, Bilbao, Spain, 2013, and in the Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, Vitoria-Gasteiz, 2011. His neodadaist work is found in numerous European collections.

Martin Pelenur (Uruguayan born in Buenos Aires, 1977). He is a surfer. He assumes painting “as a form of experimental thinking.” Although open workshops are, he says, the “most loving way to present my work,” he has had solo exhibitions that he highlights as Work Premises; at the Alejandra VonHartz Gallery, 2011; the National Museum of Visual Arts in Montevideo, Uruguay, 2010, and the Pablo Atchugarry Foundation, Uruguay, 2009. He has won awards like: Logbook Project. Competitive Fund for Culture from the National Culture MEC, 2015; National Painting Award Bartolome Macció, San Jose, Uruguay, 2012; Goethe Institute Scholarship Award. 54 National Award for Visual Arts, Uruguay. His work forms part of the permanent collection of the MACBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others.

Miguel Acosta (Caracas, Venezuela, 1953). Aquitect by trade, he was initiated into traditional drawing under the direction of Charles Ventrillon-Horber. His work borders between the disciplines of art and architecture as related their relation to the city. In Paris he developed projects with architect Ricardo Porro, and deepened the notion of the art-architecture binomial as a socio-cultural force in the city and its history. In the 90s he experimented with the valuation of the frame as an artwork itself. His sculptural pieces are based on the analysis of the mutability of forms and the flexibility of structures. He was an adjunct professor at the schools of architecture in Chile and Colombia. He participated at the May Salon in Paris, 1981, at the XVII National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Aragua, Venezuela 1994 (1st Prize for Three Dimensional Piece) and the Croquis Auction Odalys Gallery, Caracas 2014. Among his most important public pieces are the Portal al parque de los Caobos, Caracas 1996 and the Mural de la plaza de Palos Grandes, Caracas 2008.

Ana Isabel Diez (Medellín, Colombia, 1958). Formed as an electronic engineer and administrator, she studied art at institutions like the School of Visual Arts in New York SVA, the Institute of Art and Design Massachusetts-MassArt, and the Minnesotta Center for Book Artsm, among others. Innovative approaches to landscapes and conceptual work on gender violence characterize her work. She works at the print workshop La Estampa in Medellin. She has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art of Medellin, Bogota, Colombia, and at the Cultural Center of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington D.C., among others. She was nominated for the VIII Prize Luis Caballero 2015, Bogotá, Colombia, for her piece Em-bola-atados. She won the Painting Prize of the III International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Florence (Italy). Her work is part of collections such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., and the University of Salamanca (Spain), among others.

Sonia Falcone (Santa Cruz, Bolivia, 1967). Her Campos de color installation, created for the Montevideo Biennial, 2012, with 88 vessels filled with mounds of salt and spices from countless geographical areas –as a parable able to synthesize repetition and formal homogeneity with the richness of diversity- has traveled (different versions thereof) to distant cities. It was taken to the Venice Biennale in 2014. After being exhibited at the Contemporary Art Center of Siberia, Novosibirsk, and the Contemporary Art Fair Moscow, both events in Russia; at the Pop-Up Biennial Dublin in Ireland, the Latin American art fair Pinta London; it was the piece that was installed for the G-7 meeting. The installation suggests a mapping of the planet where unification does not amount to the imposition of a single modus vivendi. In her recent exhibition in L.A at the Fabien Castanier Gallery, she presented a version of her Windows to the Soul, exploring once again the relationship between natural forms and social constructions.

Florencio Gelabert (Havana, 1961). MFA University of Miami, Florida, 1998. Throughout his life, he has inserted in contemporary art the perfected ploy of an excavator of ruins, doing a kind of apocryphal urban archeology. He undermines the traditional categories of installation and sculpture while unearthing the evocative power of affection that lives in the death of things. Amongst his recent exhibitions are Journeys: A Dialog with Time. Recent works by Florencio Gelabert, Museum of Art + Design, Miami, US, 2015; Foot Steps, Villa Manuela Gallery, Havana, Cuba, 2011;

Mabel Poblet (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1986). A graduate of the Higher Institute of Arts in Havana, she participated in the Conduct Art Workshop directed by Tania Bruguera, and was awarded the Noemi Prize, as a resident fellow of the Browstone Foundation in Paris. She was resident artist of the Havana Cultura project promoted by Havana Club, and won a Special Mention from the Maretti Award Editore III Edition Jury by the Visual Arts Center & Miria Vicini. Among her recent exhibitions, the most distinguished include Patria, collateral exhibition at the Twelfth Biennial of Havana, Villa Manuela Gallery, Havana, 2015; and Marea Alta, Morro Cabaña, Havana, 2015; Reverse, Thomas Art Center; and Courageous, Madrid, 2013; Desapariencia, Gallery Link, Lima, 2013; Situacion Limite, Raquel Ponce Gallery, Madrid, 2012; and Reunificacion Familiar, Collateral to the Eleventh Havana Biennial, 2012. Her work is part of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tampa; CIFO, Miami; and the Brownstone Foundation, Paris, among other collections. In the Diario de viaje series, the circular parts, simulation of an iris, contain photographic fragments of her movements, they are logbooks of an artist that sees the reflections of history -individual and collective- in the geographical and mental landscape.

Sam Winston s’ practice is concerned with language both as a carrier of messages but also as a form in and of itself. Initially known for his typography and artist books, he employs a variety of different approaches including drawing, data mapping and poetry.
A continuing theme is his exploration of the hidden narratives found in canonical bodies of text. Works such as Darwin’s Origin of the Species or classic nineteenth century children’s literature are often subject to data mining and cut and paste techniques to playfully reveal meta narratives and visual assumptions.
Other forms by which he achieves this are through sculpture, collage and mark making. He is an advocate of concept lead, craft based strategies as a means to learning. These element are often embodied in his participatory projects, seminars and lectures.
Winston has exhibited his work in museums and galleries around the world. The Tate Britain, the British Library, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., MoMA NYC and Stanford University, amongst many others, all hold his artists’ books in their permanent collections. He lives and works in London

Viviana Zargon (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1958). With a degree in Fine Arts from Barcelona, she returned to Argentina in the mid 80’s and began documenting abandoned industrial buildings, transforming the photographic archive into conceptual pictorial pieces or intervening photographic documentations of artifacts and factories with a subtle exercise of fiction that reactivates the life of those spaces. She has exhibited individually in galleries in Buenos Aires e.g. the Benzacar Gallery, 1985; the Borges Cultural Center, 1998; as well as the Galleria Banchi Nuovi, Rome, 1996; the Sicardi-Sanders Gallery, Houston, 1997, and the Lucía de la Puente Glaeery, Lima, Peru, 2015, and the Museum Calderon Guardia, San José de Costa Rica, 2006, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lima, Peru, 2015; and the Aluna Art Foundation, Miami, 2015. She has received awards such as the First and Second Prize for best foreign show, awarded by AICA, in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic respectively, 1996 and the Grant for Artistic Creation Torches Foundation, First Prize Valoarte Foundation, Costa Rica, 2008.